


The Other Half Of A Deublek

by SaintClaire



Category: The Ingo Chronicles - Helen Dunmore
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Roger and Jenni make a very brief appearance, partners, so does Connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintClaire/pseuds/SaintClaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sapphire has been on land for a long, long time and Faro doesn't understand why.  Devastated, he decides to go North, oblivious to the fact that she is desperately trying to catch up to him.</p><p>Happy-ish ending, definitely a happy one if you read the sequel!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Tide Beats With Music

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is was first attempt at a multi-chapter story, and is ridiculously angst-y, but has a happy ending. It more or less wrote itself, I stepped back and was like What? How did I write this? But ah well. Don't throw things.

His body thrashes through the current, flexing and bending as the current flips and surges at will, before spitting him out unceremoniously into a wreath of bubbles and trails of white water. He rights himself, shaking tangled hair out of his eyes. It is time to start heading back. Surfing the wildest currents he can find is reckless, and Faro knows it. None of the currents he has found can match the speed and strength of the Great Currents from the crossing of Ingo, but Faro keeps trying. Just for a moment, to recapture the wild joy, lost in streams of bubbles as he and Sapphire laugh; - he will do anything to find it again.

Sapphire doesn't come to Ingo anymore. She is lost to the human world it seems, lost to Connor, and air, and a new baby sister. She has only come back twice since the crossing, and even cradled in the arms of Ingo her thoughts were partly lost to Air.

He misses her.

He has ignored that stupid little voice in his head, the one that tells him to listen to Saldowr, that he shouldn't surf the rogue currents so close to the Mouth Rocks, that Sapphire is his 'little sister' no longer. The little voice certainly cannot be right. What must be right however, is the word of Saldowr. However, his teacher has not said a word about Sapphire to his student, but looks upon him with mild concern in his eyes. His problem is, Saldowr has not said anything. Faro doesn't like to think of himself as prideful, but he will not waste Saldowr's time asking his opinion of Sapphire. He doesn't know his own opinion of Sapphire.

When he is finished with his duties to Saldowr that night, he makes a familiar trip. Winding through the dark waters to the cove, he grips onto a rock and launches himself into the air. Travelling through the skin still burns, but it isn't as painful as the first times. He begins to sing, weaving his melody with the currents and tides of Ingo, ribboned with the moon. Ingo responds to his song, threading her own pattern into Faro's music. Wherever on Norvys or Ingo Sapphire is, she will hear his song.

He sings until daybreak, still hoisted, unmoving on his rock ledge. When the sun breaks the horizon, turning the skin of Ingo gold and the sand of the beach to glitter, the cliffs are still empty. Sapphire is not there. Wordless, Faro slips back to the sea, and begins his daily journey, to find a harsher current.

His friends begin to find mates among the Mer, Bannerys and Malin travel East to the islands, following the dolphins. There is no word from Elvira, even with the seals migrating from the North. Sapphire's friend from the deep, the gentle whale arrives by the Groves of Aleph, asking about Sapphire. Faro tells her the truth, the partner of his deublek hasn't been to Ingo for months.

One night, Faro wakes from his restless sleep with his blood singing. Sapphire is in Ingo. She is far away, where he used to meet her by the town she called St Pirans, which Ingo claimed as it's own when the Tide Knot broke. He sprints to the bay, listening to the sound of her blood beating through the water. He is nearly there when the call becomes quieter, and then disappears. He panics, flying through the water like sea foam, screaming through the water for his friend. He is too late, she is gone. Surging through the skin, he cries out for Sapphire, but the wind carries his words away, carrying them up into the air. In desperation, he combs the water for her, mind racing through possibilities. Perhaps she fell asleep. Perhaps she drowned. He is wrong. Sapphire has left Ingo. He breaks through the skin again, wailing to the moon. She never even called out to him.

It's the day Faro is carried to the healers, bleeding and unconscious that Saldowr speaks up. Blind with rage and disappointment, Faro threw himself headfirst into a current, which in return threw him headfirst into a boulder. He lies crippled in the healers cave for days, unable to move or remember what happened to him. He is almost disappointed when his memories of Sapphire return to him, they cast a weight back on his shoulders that illnesses had lifted from him.

Saldowr urges his student, his metaphorical son to call out one last time. To speak to the gulls, to ask them for news. If nothing comes of his efforts, he should visit his sister, who would enjoy a visit, Saldowr is sure. Faro agrees, privately deciding that his trip to the north will end in Nanqu's jaws.

He breeches the surface in moonlight again, on a calm, clear night. The moon calls to the tide to rush in, and stars glint with memories on the crest of the waves. He begins to sing again, for the final time, pouring everything he can into his voice. His memories, his thoughts, his feelings, all pour into the stream of song rushing from Faro's mouth, with all the power of Ingo behind him. Ingo misses Sapphire as well. As his song ends, in the early hours of daybreak, a human voice rides with the gulls on a breeze that skips over the skin of Ingo. Sapphire's wails, tight with misery and longing echo in Faro's ears. She wants to come, he is sure of it. But she will not. Casting a long, final look at the cove that his life's memories are built on, Faro slips back into the Ingo, racing for the North, and the Nanqu that will find him there.


	2. The Race To The North

If Faro had only stayed, perched on his rock for just a little bit longer he would have seen Sapphire, tearing down to the cliffs as if her life depended on it, arms marked with bruises, followed in hot pursuit by Connor. He would have seen Connor try to hold Sapphire back, stop her from climbing down the cliff. He would have seen Sapphire abandon all caution, and leap over the edge of the cliff, regardless of the rocks below. He would have heard Connor scream after his sister in fear, as a baby screamed in their house close-by. He would have seen an old woman, as old as Saldowr step out to the cliffs edge beside Connor, and stare with him into the ocean, which has began to thrash and thrum as the tide leaves the cove, pulling Sapphire with it.

Faro's mind is closed, open to nothing and no-one. He swims hard, pulled to the North with it's fierce currents and deadly ice. He swims for days, feeling his skin prickle with life, a life that will soon be over. He wonders if this is how Elvira felt, when she needed to travel back to the north, years ago when they made the crossing of Ingo together. As though the life was flowing back into her blood and veins, anchoring her as a daughter of Ingo. He is a son of Ingo, but he is also a half. A half of a deublek, with the other half missing. Thinking of this, he swims faster, shooting past the beginnings of icebergs at a dangerous speed for unknown waters.

If Faro would only open his mind, he would find the other half of his deublek.

She is swimming toward him, crying out with her mind and her voice for him to come back, to listen. If only he could listen without having to hear. Sapphire is exhausted, but forces herself onward. In the moments she stopped combing Ingo, she spoke to Saldowr. She knows what Faro's going to do. The haunting, desperate melodies that consumed her for months in the hospital at St Pirans bounce off the walls of her mind, pressing her harder.

Torn between longing for the sea, and trying to stay for her family, the months in the specialist hospital were long, with Granny Carne and Connor being her only visitors. Only they could understand, even if they couldn't help. The tiny traces of seawater in her blood had made Sapphire a prisoner in air, as specialists poked and prodded at her, wondering what could be the cause. It's ironic, she knows, considering how many times she had feared Faro could be caught and have specialist scientists prodding at him. Connor doesn't say much, he sits and holds her hand, telling her stories about Adana, the baby girl that Mum and Rodger had together. Adana's name literally means earth. She truly belongs to Norvys, and Sapphire is glad for her. Granny Carne pats her hand and tells her to wait for her chance. It's coming.

She escaped, so briefly, plunging into the water off the Jetty, listening to orderly's yelling, calling out her name. Ingo welcomed her, wrapping her in currents and caressing her face, while rescue boats were swamped by the waves Ingo threw up. Before she could call out to Faro, to help her, rough hands dragged her by her hair out of the water, tearing her away from Ingo. The pain in her lungs showed plain on her face, making the hospital staff sure they were doing the right thing, stopping her from 'nearly drowning'. She cried herself to sleep for weeks afterwards, wondering what Faro will think of her absence. She sits by the window, and if she stands on the bed and leans out to fall, she can just see a glimpse of the ocean before she loses her balance and hits the floor.

The bruises are beginning to fade, bruises made by her fingers trying to hold her body together as Faro's music combined with Ingo, reverberated through her. The weekend home was a trial run. The force of Faro's music had been so strong that even Connor had heard it, he had been only seconds after her as she tore out the door, chased by her Mother and Roger, still holding the baby.

She begs him to open his mind, to hear her, wailing through the water as she plunges into a current.

Faro never sees Elvira. He decides not to, for however selfish his twin may or may not have been when she chose to leave him, she still knows him too well. He follows tiny trails of white water, looking for something else instead.

The booming rush of thundering water tells him when he has found it. The current cuts through Ingo like a human knife, a blur of white. Faro decides to ride it one more time, before finding Nanqu. He swims forward, not particularly caring if his neck snaps, before all at once, he is sucked with a rush into the pounding water.

Sapphire arrives at the current, to weak to call out anymore, just in time to see Faro swept into a rush of foam and bubble. With one last push, she gets herself into the suction zone of the deadly stream of water. Then she too disappears.

Faro feels joy and old memories pushing at his mind, reminding him of the last time all four of them surfed the currents, until the they tipped over the top of the world and flew back down the other side. Sapphire feels close in his mind, memories of her laughing with joy, and the huge swoop they felt in their stomachs as the swept over the tip of the north. He feels calm, content. When the racing current finally shoots him out a curve, he feels ready. He feels ready to find Nanqu.

By the time Sapphire has been spat out the end of the Great Northern Current she is almost too weak to move. She bats her hands in the water, trying to swim like a seal with no tail and clumsy flippers. Memories of Connor, of baby sister Adana float through her mind, reminding her of those she left. She doesn't want to leave them, doesn't want Connor to think she left him. She pushes their faces away, and keeps calling in a feeble voice in her mind for Faro. Shifting ice looms in the water ahead of her, cracking and filling her heavy limbs with cold. She keeps moving.

When Nanqu appears before Sapphire, Faro is only meters away, on the other side of an iceberg. Nanqu's white teeth gleam in the cold darkness, thick fur waving gently in the water. As he swims towards Sapphire with a roar of triumph, Sapphire gives up. She puts every store of remaining energy into her voice, calling out a weak, scratchy goodbye to Faro, before Nanqu's jaws seize her limp, exhausted body.


	3. A Pattern Of Promises

Faro barrels into Nanqu's side like a sea bull, thrashing her with his tail and raking his nails as close to his eyes as he can. Nanqu drops Sapphire, who floats gently down before coming to rest on a shelf of ice. Faro screams curses at Nanqu, and fights her claws with bare fingers, rage and sheer terror giving him an edge. The arrival of a second, female Nanqu only makes him fight harder, rage turning to confusion as the female Nanqu helps him. With a submissive roar, the Nanqu turns and lumbers away, swimming clumsily back to the air, bloody streaming from wounds Faro made in his side.

Faro dives, hurtling towards the ice shelf where Sapphire rests, cradling the thin, shaking body against his chest. He rocks her, back and forth, desperately pressing his fingers against the shallow wounds from Nanqu's teeth.

"Wake up… Please wake up… Don't leave me, not now." Faro's whisper breaks on his final sentence, he hugs his fragile friend to him with strong arms, looking up as Nanqu's soft fur brushes against his arm. "Why did you help me?" he says quietly, looking back to Sapphire, trying to shake her awake.

"Don't recognize me, Merboy?", says the gravelling voice in reply. "Nanqu does not forget a favor, and now I have repaid it."

A thousand more memories fly through Faro's mind, of a female polar bear with a metal spike in her foot, to weak to catch food, and too hungry to pass up a human for a meal. Sapphire had pulled the spike out, healing and comforting Nanqu, who had agreed not to eat them in her thanks, but swam away, warning them not to cross her path again.

"I remember you" he says, tipping his head to look her in the face properly. "Thank you."

"Will the human girl wake?" Nanqu replies, a gentle paw brushing over Sapphire's blue skin. Faro startles, looking at the colour, so similar to Sapphire's first trips to Ingo, when she couldn't breathe, too full of air, so blue… He places a hand just below her breasts, against her ribs, feeling the tense muscles, tight against the skin, along with a fading heartbeat. He lets go of her head in a flash, wrapping both her hands around his wrists. "Breathe Sapphire, breathe, BREATHE!"

He studies her face with wide eyes, watching for minute changes. He feels his body begin to go limp in relief with her face begins to lose the blue tinge, hints of brown and pink returning to her face. The skin against her ribs doesn't throb as hard against the muscles, and he feels her heartbeat become stronger. The weak clutch of her fingers on his wrists has never filled him with so much relief, his joy equal to that first, euphoric ride over the top of the world.

He cradles her back against his chest, frowning in concern at the feeble cough that wracks her body as her eyes flutter open. "Faro… forgive me. Please."

She can barely speak loudly enough for him to hear, her words jumbled and distorted, but the sound of her voice is sweet, echoing through the water like the whale's call.

He hugs her as close as possible to him, curling his strong tail around her legs, holding her head tight to his chest, where he can feel the gentle swish of her breaths against his bare skin, right over his heart. He forgave her the minute he saw her, a second before Nanqu reached her, snapping her up in his jaws. He presses a kiss to the top of her head, watching her hair float in a wreath around her head, like a human tiara.

"I forgive you," he whispers. He picks up her hand, twining his fingers with hers, admiring the patterns of the two deubleks, side by side. "I'm part of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a follow up, for anyone who's interested. Thanks for taking the time to read!


End file.
